


And Ever

by Rag



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuse, Army, Character Study, F/F, Homeworld Gems - Freeform, Homeworld is Horrible, Pre-Canon, Pseudo-Incest, Rape/Non-con Elements, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-04 14:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11557065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rag/pseuds/Rag
Summary: Rose emerges from the ground knowing what she was made to do. Pink Diamond denies her the ability to do it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the major character death comes way later but i figure i'll warn for it now  
> also the rape tag is mostly a trigger tag, it's all metaphors and doesn't get graphic at all  
> mind the tags this thing is kinda grimdark trigger soup

Rose emerges from the ground knowing her purpose. She knows who she is - she knows her facet and her cut, and she understands how they differentiate her from the other 523 Rose Quartz soldiers that emerged alongside her. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but she imagines it’s similar to the rest of them. Pink toned, with big, curly hair and a large, sturdy frame. Her gem is placed in her stomach, while the rest of her Rose Quartz sisters have their gems in other places. She understands the meaning of this – should they need to fuse, each gem needs to be able to exist and breathe in the new, larger fusion form. Two Gems with right-palm gem placements would create a stunted, broken fusion. So gems sit in different places for each of them.

She emerges knowing what to do, and she emerges knowing that she is more than fit to do it. Her job is to fight. She was designed to charge alongside the armies of offensive Quartz soldiers, using her shield and sword to protect them as they obliterate the giant predatory lifeforms that stand between Homeworld and the resources on this planet. She emerges knowing everything she needs to know about her enemies – their reproductive habits, their offensive style, their strengths and weaknesses – as do the rest of her Quartz sisters. She joins them on the field. She sinks her sword into the necks of beasts triple her size and throws their bleeding bodies into the screaming herds that watch from a distance.

She enjoys the violence of it. She was made for this. Fighting feels natural. It feels good.

A few hours into her first battle, she sees a beast gnawing savagely on an Agate. Slams her shield into its neck hard enough that she hears the thing break, then sees it fall heavily on top of the Gem. Good. Rose focuses back on the scrimmage in front of her, using her sword to dispatch a few more of the useless mammals.

When Rose looks back over at the Agate few minutes later, she sees that the beast hasn’t moved, and the Agate is still lying motionless on the ground. She runs over to her and pulls the rapidly-cooling monster off of her.

The Agate is in bad shape. Her Gem, set in the center of her chest, has a big, ugly crack clean down the middle of its cut. Rose understands fear for the first time as the Agate’s form flickers in and out, and her deep voice sprays nonsense words in Rose’s direction. Sometimes it seems like the Gem is looking at her, begging for help with pleading eyes as her words come out scrambled and strange. Rose doesn’t know how she can help her, but she knows she has to get her out of the battle. Here, she’ll just be carelessly, pointlessly stomped by a herd of the beasts or, worse, some of their own Quartz soldiers. She picks the Agate up and kicks off the ground, flying back to the home base with a messy jump, and hands the Agate off to a confused-looking Peridot before kicking back into battle.

She tries not to think about the Agate as she fights. She’s just one soldier. It shouldn’t matter to Rose what happens to her, she shouldn’t be programmed to have this concern. But she does.

She hopes she’s okay.

-

She checks on her later, despite the alarm bells ringing in her head that tell her that she’s expressing disgusting, unnatural concern. She’s thrilled to find her in considerably better shape than she left her in. The Agate has been laid out on a comfortable-looking robotic seat. Her form is still flickering, but not nearly as rapidly or violently as it was before. The crack in her Gem seems to have been filled with some sort of sealant.

She recognizes Rose immediately, and beams at her warmly.

“You saved me,” she says. “Thank you.”

Rose doesn’t know what to say. “What’s your number?”

The Agate smiles. “Facet Z, cut 749.”

“I’m facet 7B, cut 042.”

 “What will they do with you now? Can you fight?”

The Agate shakes her head. “Science, apparently? They’re experimenting on me to figure out how to fix cracked Gems. The Peridot who works on me says this has given her all kinds of ideas about how we’re built. Seems like pretty exciting stuff.”

“Are you… Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m alive, and I might even get back on the field someday, if they can figure this out.”

“Are you the Rose that brought this Agate here?” A Peridot asks. Rose hadn’t heard her approach.

“Yes.”

“I cannot thank you enough for that. You have my deepest thanks. Really. Now, I have to take a few samples from her, if you… don’t… mind?”

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

“Come visit me sometime,” the Agate whispers, before the Peridot is close enough to hear her. Rose nods and slips out. There’s no battle to be fought today, so she creeps back to her camp, where she slips into a pause-like sleep with the rest of the Quartzes. They’ll wake up when Homeworld has active use for their abilities.

-

The first time Rose sees Pink Diamond, she already knows who she is. She knows to get down on one knee with her sword in front of her, to not look her in the eye, and to hope that the blood coating her hands and arms doesn’t offend her Diamond’s sensibilities. She hopes that she blends enough into the crowd of nearly identical Roses, and her Agate and Flint sisters, and that their tattered state reads as a reflection of their physical prowess rather than any inherent crassness or slovenliness.

The battle that day was a decisive victory. Rose and her sisters carved a clear swath of ground upon which an alpha kindergarten could be established. The land they needed was wiped of any life that could possibly disrupt gestation of new Gems, and the hatching process would leech the earth of nutrients and effectively destroy any potential for any annoying new life to emerge anywhere nearby. And then, they would have a small army of Amethysts to add to their ranks. An extremely productive battle, and Rose had swelled with pride to have been a part of it.

Pink Diamond whispers something to the Emerald standing at her side. Rose knows that she is to wait until her Diamond leaves to move out with her squadron.  She watches out of the corner of her eye as Pink Diamond looks over the Roses.

Their eyes meet. Pink Diamond’s stare seems to bore into Rose, and a shock runs through her chest. Rose quickly averts her gaze, stares at the cracked and bloodied mud beneath her. Her pulse pounds in her ears and her throat feels tight. She hopes she hasn’t offended her Diamond with her rudeness, daring to look at her when she should have showed deference. She doesn’t pick her eyes back up even as she hears a murmur go through the crowd. She doesn’t look up when she hears a soft but purposeful clearing of a throat in front of her.

“Rose Quartz 042 facet 7B?”

She recognizes the voice of a Pearl before she looks at her. Only then does she look up to see her, Pink Diamond’s Pearl, staring at her with a fiery expression.

“Yes.”

“Pink Diamond wishes to speak with you. Come along.”

Rose does as she’s told. She walks through the ranks of her army and tries to ignore the burn of their curiosity. She’s not used to all eyes being on her. She’s used to being part of a team. Up until now, direct attention has meant she needs to defend herself from an immediately oncoming attack from a sharp-toothed, heavily-muscled beast. The closer she gets to Pink Diamond, the more she feels the attention of everyone on the field clawing into her, and the stronger the fear gets.

 “As you requested, My Diamond,” the Pearl says.

Rose crosses her arms in a salute. It strains them a bit to make the shape, but she knows she has to.

“You’ll come with me, little Rose,” her Diamond says. Her voice seems to reverberate through Rose, shaking her to her core. This close to her, she can’t even see her Diamond speak – she barely comes up to her shin.

“Yes, My Diamond.”

*

Rose doesn’t want to be shattered. If it’s the will of the Diamonds, she’ll allow it. But it seems a senseless waste of resources. And, honestly, she wants to fight more. She likes fighting. There are so many more battles to win and beasts to kill.

Pink Diamond gets into her palanquin, bringing her Pearl, her two Emerald guards, and Rose in with her. They ride in silence, and Rose watches the distance between her and her sisters grow at breakneck speed. The longer the ride lasts, the less hope remains in her that she’ll see them again. That she’ll ever be able to check on Agate facet Z, cut 749.

She hopes she’s doing okay.

Desert shifts into forest, and forest shifts into prairie. The sun falls a few notches in the sky. Rose understands what a Quartz needs to understand about Earth and the constant shifts and changes, but there's still a lot that mystifies her. For example, why the types of plants and animals are different in one chunk of land as compared to another, or why the same set of atmospheric conditions sometimes produce rainfall and other times produced only a stiflingly thick mist of water in the air around her.

Rose sees a large structure on the horizon, too big for any of the stupid mammals to have built. As she gets closer, she sees that it's a giant pink-marble building, somewhere between a castle and a ship. The Palanquin stops outside of it.

Pink Diamond steps out, her Pearl following closely behind.

“Rose,” she says. “Follow me inside.”

Rose follows. The Emerald guards remain inside, looking straight ahead.

Pink Diamond opens a gigantic set of doors. The inside of the castle is starkly decorated. Seats and tables fashioned out of ugly, crass Earth materials sparsely populate the giant swaths of space. There’s a crude stage, probably for some sort of performance, made of what looks like crudely-sanded wood. The only part of the room that looks remotely Homeworld is the giant pink throne that Pink Diamond sits on.

“You’re a very beautiful Rose Quartz,” Pink Diamond says slowly. “Pearl, fetch me some water and a washcloth.”

Her Pearl bows and leaves, glaring at Rose on her way out. 

“Look at me, Rose.”

She looks up. Pink Diamond’s eyes are harsh and strong, almost too strong to look at, like looking directly into the sun on a cloudless day. Pink Diamond smiles, but it does little to soften her sharp features.

Shocking, everything about her is shocking, and that feeling doesn’t lessen the longer Rose is in her presence. She wonders how the Pearl can stand it. Maybe she’s engineered for it. Maybe she has it built into her, a tolerance for this.

“Yes, a _very_ beautiful Rose Quartz.”

The Pearl comes back into the hall.

“Wash the grime from her, Pearl. I want my Rose shining.”

 _Her_ Rose? Of course, Rose is the property of her Diamond. But nothing about this fits together in a way that makes sense. Rose Quartzes are made to fight. It shouldn’t matter whether or not she has blood on her, and she can’t understand why Pink Diamond cares enough to clean it off her.

The Pearl is only as gentle as she needs to be, which is not very much so, but Rose realizes it’s the first time she’s been touched outside of battle. That besides getting the Agate off the field, it’s the first time she’s been touched by another Gem at all. It feels strange. It feels wrong. She focuses on the way that the dried blood and dirt leave her skin and muddy up the water in the dustbin. That, too, feels wrong. Before today, she hasn't bothered with cleaning, and only just let herself be washed only by occasional rain showers that poured down from the thick, cottony clouds of condensation that hovered the fields. A soldier doesn’t need to be pretty. A soldier just needs to fight.

“Such a primitive technology, this washbin, but we don’t have the resources here that we do on Homeworld, I’m afraid.”

Rose doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t understand this. She doesn’t like this. Why is Pink Diamond taking such an interest in her? Why is she talking with her like she's a peer?

The water gets dirty, her skin gets clean, and Pink Diamond’s Pearl pats her dry with a towel and _hmpfs_ proudly.

“All done, My Diamond,” she says, bowing deeply.

“Thank you, my darling Pearl.” She strokes the Pearl’s head softly with her fingertip. The Pearl arches into it happily. Her fingertip is nearly the size of the Pearl’s head, but she doesn’t seem afraid in the least. “Yes, an absolutely stunning Rose.” She stops scratching at the Pearl’s head and runs her finger down Rose’s arm instead. It sends uncomfortable shivers, almost like jolts of electricity, down Rose’s spine. “Such lovely hues. And your hair, and your face…” Pink Diamond brushes Rose’s lips softly and lingers there. Rose wishes she was poofed, this feels wrong and weird and uncomfortable and even a bit terrifying. She’s relieved when Pink Diamond pulls away, but she keeps her face stony. “Yes, very good. I’ll have to thank the Sodalite that designed you. Although we’ll have to do _something,_ ” she grimaces and gestures to Rose’s torso, “about those hideous rags. Absolutely not, not in my court. A cream-white dress would be much more fitting. I’ll have one of my servants make you up something tonight.”

Rose likes her outfit. Since the day she was born, she's worn the same standard army cut uniform as the rest of her Quartz sisters, with a simple circular cutout around her navel to let her Gem breathe. The idea of a dress is uncomfortable to her. Frivolous, extravagant and unnecessary. And not her style, not at all. “Thank you, my Diamond,” she says, because she knows she should. She doesn't have a say in the matter. If her Diamond wants her in a dress, her Diamond will have her in a dress. She ignores the Pearl, who’s not even trying to hide her open disdain at the attention Pink Diamond is paying Rose.

 “Rose, I think I’ll keep you here. You’ll be a part of my entourage from now on.”

Rose swallows and tries to keep her face neutral.

_Forever?_

She hopes not. Maybe, hopefully, Pink Diamond will grow bored of her soon, and send her back to her army, to fight alongside them and do what she was made to do. She wasn’t made for this. She wasn't made to be a member of the inner court of a Diamond. 

“Yes, my Diamond."

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pearl teaches Rose to dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just in case i haven't made it clear, this Pearl isn't our Pearl, it's Pink Pearl

Rose’s dress is tight, complicated, and far too revealing. Pink Diamond watches as Rose changes out of her uniform and into this frilly little thing. Her Pearl had taken measurements earlier, but Rose wonders if she hadn’t intentionally written down a size too small, out of error (unlikely) or to make her uncomfortable (distinctly possible). Her uniform had been spacious and allowed for movement and speed. In this dress, Rose feels like she can barely walk without tripping over one of the several layers of silky cloth. Her Gem is exposed through a ridiculously ornate diamond cutout. Where her uniform had covered all but her hands, head and neck before, she’s now bared at her shoulders, arms, and calves. The Pearl fits her into these stupid white shoes with a little raised chunk at the heel that forces her onto her to walk on the balls of her feet.

Pink Diamond seems delighted, though.

“Oh, it’s absolutely lovely, Pearl. Thank you.” Her Pearl smiles smugly as Pink Diamond scratches at her head. “Simply lovely. I think-“ she’s interrupted by a shrill ring. She pulls open a pad and reads over several lines of text seriously, then sighs. “Rose.”

“Yes, my Diamond?”

“I have something I simply must attend to now. Later tonight I’m hosting a gathering, and I’m going to show you off. Pearl,” she says, snapping her fingers, “you’ll teach her how to dance in my stead.”

 “Yes, my Diamond,” the Pearl says.

Dancing. Rose doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She imagines it’s a form of fighting. Maybe Pink Diamond is showing off her because she thinks she’s such a fine example of a Rose Quartz, and she’ll be taught an elegant form of battle. A battle against the Pearl would be an absolute joke – she could crush her easily, before she even knew what was happening.

Pink Diamond gets up and bends down so that she’s almost face-to-face with Rose. She beams with muted excitement. “You’ll do well for me, won’t you?”

“Yes, my Diamond.”

“Good girl. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here to watch you begin to blossom. You’ll make it up to me in other ways, I’m sure.”

Rose doesn’t know what that means, but she doesn’t like it.

She and the Pearl both bow deeply as Pink Diamond leaves. The Pearl makes sure Pink Diamond is gone before looking up.

“This is absurd, and I have absolutely _no_ idea why she’s bothering with _you_ ,” she says curtly, saying the last word like it’s a curse.

“I… don’t either?”

The Pearl rolls her eyes. “Of course _you_ wouldn’t, you brute. That goes without saying. _You’re_ not her attendant, and you weren’t exactly designed for higher thought processes.”

The words sting. Rose doesn’t want to be here, and she doesn’t want to be told about all the traits she’s lacking. Wanting to cut this interaction as short as possible, she draws her sword. The sooner the Pearl teaches her this fight, the sooner she can leave her presence.

“Teach me to dance.”

The screams and jumps back, guarding her Gem pathetically with her hands, as if Rose couldn’t easily slice them right off if she wanted to. Weak. Rose may not have been built for higher thought, but Pearls were not build for fighting.

“You can’t kill me! I’m her Pearl! She’ll _shatter_ you!”

“I’m not going to kill you. Teach me the dance.”

“Put that thing _away!_ ” she shrieks.

Rose dematerializes her sword, and the Pearl relaxes a bit.

“Oh my _god_! What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Is dancing a weaponless style, then?” Rose asks.

“How stupid _are_ you?” Rose takes a slow, deep breath through your nose and fights the urge to rematerialize her sword, if for nothing else than shutting up the Pearl’s litany of insults. Her intent must be clear on her face, because the Pearl quickly switches gears. “Dancing. Dancing, like.” The Pearl does a series of ridiculous-looking, shaky, useless maneuvers on the floor in front of Rose. She sees Rose’s expression and laughs. “You’ve never danced before, of course. When would you have had the opportunity? God, it _would_ fall to me to teach you.” She sighs. “Here. Repeat after me, to the best of your… ability.”

The Pearl does something with her leg, and Rose tries to repeat it. She understands what she needs to do, but when she tries to move her leg it just doesn’t happen, not like the Pearl’s. Her leg catches in her stupid skirt, tripping her.

“Good god. Keep trying, _Rose_. I’m keeping it simple for you. We have to get this right by tonight.”

She keeps trying. In addition to the dress, her ridiculous shoes make it almost impossible to find her balance, and she falls on her side more than a few times. The Pearl makes sure to remind her at every step of the way that she should have mastered it on the first attempt, because this is absolutely the simplest step. But eventually, she gets it.

For a few uncomfortable hours, the Pearl teaches her an “exceedingly simple” routine of steps and swings and strange, absurd little jiggles. It’s ridiculous and pointless. When the Pearl does it, she can at least see some aesthetic beauty in it. It’s still pointless, but when she moves in the way she was built to move, it makes Rose stop and watch. She’s elegant, lithe and fast and breathtaking.

Rose, on the other hand, is clumsy and burdensome. Her body wasn’t built for this in any kind of way, and she can’t fathom why her Diamond wants her to do this. She really doesn’t know what to make of it, and it makes her uneasy when she thinks too hard about it. So she focuses on the dance. And god knows she needs to focus on the dance, because nothing has ever come less naturally to her.

Eventually, she finishes the entire routine. The Pearl has her practice it several more times before they hear Pink Diamond’s caravan. They halt in their steps and await her presence.

She enters the hall with several other Gems. None of them match up to her grandeur, of course, but they’re larger than any other Gems that Rose has ever seen. Labradorites and Moonstones and Chrysoberyls. High-ranking military strategists and officers that never bothered to grace the Quartzes with their presence. Rose feels all their eyes on her as she and the Pearl bow.

“This is her. Isn’t she just gorgeous?” Pink Diamond asks them.

Rose doesn’t look up to see their reaction. She doesn’t care. She hears soft affirmative murmurs throughout the crowd. It makes her uncomfortable. She wasn’t made to be “gorgeous,” and it seems almost perverse that they care that she, apparently, is.

Rose waits as Pink Diamond takes seat in her throne, and the Gems around her sit amongst some of the tables. She and the Pearl sit at her feet, waiting for her next command.  It takes some time to come. In the meantime, she listens as some of the Crysoberyls begin to talk about colonization plans. She can’t hear every voice, but she makes out enough to understand that Homeworld is encountering some especially sentient life forms on some one of the regions.

“Yes, very resilient little apes. Giving us quite a run for our money over there. Absolutely ridiculous.”

“There’s something … unsettling about slaughtering something so intelligent, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not. And the soldiers certainly don’t care.” A little chorus of laughter comes from several of the Gems.

“No, they wouldn’t.”

 “Rose,” Pink Diamond says, and Rose snaps her attention to her. “Get on the stage and dance for us. I’m so very excited to see how you’ve learned.”

As much as Rose knew this was coming, the bizarreness of it still strikes her. None of this makes sense. Why? Why is Pink Diamond doing this? When will she bring her back to the battlefield? She _will_ bring her back to the battlefield. Rose is convinced of this. She’ll bring her back eventually. Her life won’t just be _this_ from now on. She’ll go back, and she’ll be the talk of the town. All her sisters will bend over backwards to hear her crazy stories about the Hall of the Diamonds and all the upper-crust Gems that she saw. And she’ll tell them, so relieved to have closed this incomprehensible chapter in her life.

Rose expresses none of this as she bows deeply. “Of course, my Diamond.”

She forces her legs to move and prays that her dance isn’t as horribly awkward as the Pearl had assured her it was. She executes it as well as she can, making sure not to trip over her too-tight dress or the strange shoes.

Pink Diamond is smiling ever so slightly when she finishes. She doesn’t look at any of the other Gems, but she hears their soft, restrained clapping.

“So interesting. Such an impressive specimen you are. Would you believe she was on the field just yesterday?”

The upper-crust Gems murmur amongst themselves.

“Very good, Rose. Come back.” She snaps her fingers.

Rose remembers her snapping her fingers at her Pearl, and no one else. She feels ill. She takes her seat next to the Pink Pearl at Pink Diamond’s feet and waits for whatever comes next.


	3. Chapter 3

As the days pass, Rose loses all but a flicker of hope that she’ll be going back home.

Pink Diamond tells her, in pieces, what she wants from her. Learn to dance, ideally to the point that she’ll be as graceful as a Pearl. Try on pretty new outfits and jewels. Fetch objects and people for Pink Diamond, deliver short messages to officials. Smile when Pink Diamond looks at her, praises her, touches her.

She’s using her like a Pearl. Sometimes she’s assigned literally the same task as Pink Pearl, at the same time, to be done together.

Pink Pearl notices this. Pink Pearl despises this, and despises Rose for it, as if she has any say in the matter. As if she wants it. Rose doesn’t dare to tell her otherwise, because she doesn’t doubt for a second that she would tell Pink Diamond immediately that her precious Rose was stoking treasonous, rebellious flames. She can just hear it. _As if I would ever betray you, my Diamond! I’m scared to work alongside her anymore, my Diamond. She’s dangerous._ Maybe it’d get her sent back, but there’s still a chance that Pink Diamond would shatter her. Rose doesn’t know Pink Diamond well enough to take that chance.

Pink Diamond hosts “intel meetings” daily. The meetings consist mostly of high-ranking Gems sitting around their glass tables chattering and eating strange food that’s made every day by a pair of Corals that work ceaselessly in the back kitchen area of the quarters. The Gems want to “get a taste of the Earth while we still can.” Sometimes Pink Diamond has her Pearl or Rose dance for them. Sometimes she plays music. Rose hadn’t heard music before coming here. Slow, droning tones that emanate from a strange machine and have a soothing effect on whoever listens to it. It’s strange.

Nothing is accomplished at the “intel meetings” besides entertainment and gossip. No plans are made in large part because they don’t need to be made. The Earth poses some small challenges to colonization, but they’re nothing that can’t be overcome with Homeworld’s overpowering technology.

Rose listens to their conversations, because if she focuses on nothing she feels like she’ll go out of her mind with boredom.

Homeworld is making progress on most of the continents. Debates about what to do with the sentient apes continues to heat up. At some point, Rose hears some Moonstone mention that this is the first planet they’ve colonized that’s had sentient life. Rose had had no idea. She’d assumed that every planet was like this. Why else create a soldier class of Gems? But she can’t ask, because even if she was permitted to leave Pink Diamond’s side for a moment, there was absolutely no guarantee that the Moonstone would permit such a low-class Gem to speak to her. She might even find it insulting.

“Honestly,” the Moonstone lowers her voice to where Rose can barely hear it. “I find it unsettling that so many of the creatures are sentient.”

“Define sentience, Moonstone,” an Emerald says derisively. “These things are alive, but they’re so _stupid_ that it doesn’t matter.”

“But they are alive, and don’t you think it’s… at least a bit cruel?”

“No. They’re too stupid to care, Moonstone. Frankly, I find their tiny, stupid existence offensive. Killing them is a favor.”

The Emerald’s words make Rose furious. When she killed, nothing so sadistic had crossed her mind. She had a job to do, and she did it, in the quickest and most efficient way possible. She regarded her marks as challenges to overcome.

Through all this, she keeps her face stony and impassive, staring at the wall. Leaving to process this in private is not a luxury that’s going to be afforded to her.

The Emerald drones on. “All this to say, Moonstone, no. It’s not unsettling, and it’s shockingly foolish that you think it is.”

Which puts the Moonstone on the defensive. “I don’t think it is. Of course I don’t. I just was wondering, as a thought experiment.”

“Oh, good.” The Emerald doesn’t seem to buy it, but she doesn’t push. “Yes, I think we’re doing everyone involved a service by wiping them out. This planet should go to someone who deserves it, and those stupid apes and lizards and trees simply don’t.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Disgusting. It’s disgusting and wrong.

The subject changes. Rose tries to focus on more, but she can’t think about anything else.

She’d never considered the sentience of the creatures she’d killed. She’d never considered the ramifications of ending a living being. Now, all those ramifications are crashing on her. The dull terror she feels every time she worries that Pink Diamond will shatter her, that’s what she did to all of those creatures. Thousands of them. She feels like something in her mind is breaking. Where does she get off caring about this, when she was literally born to kill sentient life? She must be broken, to care about it now. She shouldn’t care.

But she does.

She wishes she could buy into the Emerald’s logic. She also wishes she could have realized this sooner, before she had so much blood on her hands. It’s too late to take it back. Thousands of them, all kinds of different creatures, whole families and ecosystems. What she was made to do.

Slowly, it dawns on her that she doesn’t want to go back. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to kill again. She isn’t just stuck here anymore. She _has_ to keep herself here.

*

When the visitors leave, Pink Diamond has Rose and Pink Pearl pick up their scraps and wash their dishes. Rose breaks the first one she touches without meaning to. Such a fragile little thing. Pink Pearl shrieks at her and tells her exactly how useless she is. Rose looks at the bleeding cut in her hand and the thick shards of ceramic on the table and laughs quietly to herself. Poor little plate. Neither of them were made to meet each other. The plate was made to be used gently, and Rose was made to destroy. The plate never had a chance.

She cleans up the scraps and disposes of them as quietly as she can, throwing it under the stage when Pink Pearl leaves to bring a pile of dishes to the washing area. The less she has to hear Pink Pearl’s shrieking insults, the better.

One of the plates is left mostly untouched. A pile of green leaves basted with a sauce that smells sharp. A half-charred muscle from some creature that Rose can’t identify. She wonders if she’s ever killed one of them before.

Rose has never eaten anything. Gems don’t need to eat, and it’s a waste of resources. Before coming here, she thought Gems just didn’t eat, but she’s learned that, no, it’s a luxury reserved for the powerful. She’s been wondering what it’s like every night as she watches them. Pink Pearl is still in the kitchen, and without thinking, she shoves the meat in her mouth and chews.

It’s weird. The muscles are salty and tough and feel foreign in her mouth. She doesn’t like it. She puts the rest back on the plate and piles it up with the rest of the dishes.

*

When Rose is done with the dishes, she reports back to Pink Diamond, as always. Usually, Pink Diamond dismisses her, maybe gives her a few pats on the head along with Pink Pearl. And then the two of them go to their sleeping chambers and power down for the night. Tonight is different.

“Pearl, darling,” she says, “You’re dismissed.”

Pink Pearl waits a few beats for Pink Diamond to dismiss Rose, too. She doesn’t.

“You’re dismissed,” Pink Diamond repeats, sounding a little annoyed.

“Yes, my Diamond! Sorry, my Diamond!” Pink Pearl salutes frantically, bows, and skitters out of the room.

Rose waits. She realizes that this is the first time she’s been alone with Pink Diamond.

“Rose. You’ve been here so long, and I’ve barely gotten to know the thoughts in your little head.”

“I’m sorry, my Diamond,” she tries to hide it, but the bafflement is clear in her voice. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you like it here?”

Rose keeps her face even and considers how she wants to respond. “Of course, my Diamond. I’ve been learning and seeing so much.”

“Oh, lovely. Sometimes I wondered if you didn’t want to go back.”

The skin on Rose’s back feels like it’s crawling.

“Of course not, my Diamond. My only goal is to do whatever you want me to do.”

That makes Pink Diamond beam.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful. And here I was worried I might have to reprogram you,” she says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do.

Rose swallows. Her suspicions were right: Pink Diamond wants specific behaviors from her, and failure to delivery on her expectations will result in either being sent back or reprogrammed. Reprogrammed, probably, into even more of a vapid Pearl than she already is. She doesn’t want that. Her mind, at least, she wants to remain her own.

“Is that all, my Diamond?”

Pink Diamond pauses a few tense moments, staring at Rose. “No. You can shape-shift, right? I believe you were created with that ability.”

Rose nods.

“Shapeshift for me. Grow as large as you can.”

A bizarre request, but Rose is learning to question them less when it comes to Pink Diamond. She never gets any answers from her or her Pearl, and she can only just react to them as they come and hope to make sense of it later.

Rose closes her eyes and lets her cells do the work. She’d shapeshifted a bit on the field, but mostly just extending one limb or another to ensure that a blow landed, or her shield was where it needed to be, over a fallen comrade. This time, she works to grow her entire body at as even of a pace as she can manage. Her dress grows along with her. Maybe later, she should try to figure out if she can expand the dress to something that fits better than horribly. But not now, with Pink Diamond staring at her and waiting for her to obey. Later.

When she’s done growing as far as she possibly can, she’s half the size of Pink Diamond. Pink Diamond beams down at her, her face warmer than Rose has ever seen it.

“Good. Very good. When you attend to me at night, I want you to be this size. Is that understood?”

Rose nods as a slight sweat breaks on her forehead. Maintaining this form is exhausting and uncomfortable. Most of her cells feel completely empty. She feels like she might be blown away by a strong breeze. But when Pink Diamond smiles down at her and strokes her cheek, her thumb is no longer as large as Rose’s face. It’s almost like talking to a Jasper fusion instead, but much more nerve-wracking. It gets easier to be around Pink Diamond the longer Rose is here, but it never gets easy. The Diamonds are overwhelming. The Diamonds are a class of their own, and they were made to overwhelm, and Gems like Rose were made to be overwhelmed by them.

“Do you think you can do a bit more for me?” She asks softly, gently, but Rose knows she doesn’t have the choice to deny her. She _will_ expand, because her Diamond wants her to. So she pushes herself out a little farther, feels her form swell up again, feels herself become even emptier and more hollow as she balloons up another few feet.

“Oh, that’s just lovely, Rose. Thank you, that’ll do just fine.” Pink Diamond says some more vapid praise that Rose unintentionally tunes out. It’s hard to focus.

Rose smiles and nods. At least, when she’s focusing so hard on containing this awful form, there isn’t much mental energy left to think about how disgusting the words she has to say are.

“And what do you think of the sentience issue, my little rosebud?”

Rose’s pulse quickens.

“What sentience issue, my Diamond?”

“I saw you listening to one of the discussions. I know you listen to the generals when they speak. You’re sharper than you let on, aren’t you?” Pink Diamond smiles and runs her hand down Rose’s back like she’s her prized cat. It sends disgusting chills down her body. “I really picked an exceptional specimen from the field that day.”

“Thank you, my Diamond.”

“Well? Tell me.”

Rose takes a deep breath. It’s harder to think when she’s shapeshifted.

What does Pink Diamond want to hear?

“I understand why it makes some Gems uncomfortable. But it’s the cost of Homeworld’s progress, so it must be made.”

“Oh, good.” She’s quiet, like she’s just considering this for the first time. “Yes, that makes excellent sense. Thank you.”

It almost seems like she herself doesn’t know what she thinks about it. Like she’s asking Rose to try to figure it out. But that’s too ridiculous to be possible.

“What do you think, my Diamond?” Rose asks carefully.

“Oh, just that. The ends must justify the means. It’s messy business, but it must be done.”

Rose nods.

“Thank you, Rose. You can shift back down and go to bed, you must be exhausted. We’ll work you up into holding it for longer.”

“Thank you, my Diamond.”

Rose holds back a sigh and relief washes over her body as she starts to shrink back down. She bows again and retires back to her room.


End file.
